Haas is too good for baseball now

Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 15, 1995

OAKLAND - Wally Haas attended his last baseball owners' meeting this week, and claimed at one point to hold bittersweet feelings about the gathering.

"I guess bittersweet is the right way to put it," he said quietly. "I mean, this has been a big part of our lives."

But one last gathering with the other owners? Bittersweet? Yeah, right. Like a farmer has bittersweet feelings about a barn fire.

For one, the meeting was in Detroit, which is, well, Detroit. A nice town for getting things done indoors, but otherwise, well, it's Detroit.

For two, nothing much happened . . . again. No movement on the labor problem, no news on a television contract, no news on the festering situation in Pittsburgh. Baseball is no better off for this meeting than it was before it.

In fact, a case could be made that it is worse off now than before, because the one thing the owners did manage to do is approve unanimously the sale of the A's from the Haas family to the Schott-Hofmann rich-dude consortium.

So it's just down to waiting for escrow to close Oct. 31, and then the Haas Era in Oakland ends. The celebration for the family's ownership, and in particular for its patriarch, Walter Jr., who is gravely ill with cancer, happens Sunday at the Coliseum, and then it's all over but the exchange of keys to the liquor cabinet.

The sale of the team has been mostly linked to Walter Haas' illness, which now has him "at home and semi-bedridden," according to an A's spokesman who has grown accustomed to referring to Walter's health in the vaguest of terms.

In fact, Wally, the son who grew up in all manner of ways as the club president, says it might have happened anyway. In addition to the simple matter of getting his affairs in order, and not sticking his heirs with a ball team that not all of them wanted, it was just time to go. Too much of what baseball was when the family bought in is no longer there to be found. The people are different, the commitment is less evident, the business of the game is protecting the investment.

"This decision was actually separate from my dad's health," Wally Haas said. "I didn't believe this until I read it and looked it up, but we're the sixth-longest-running ownership group, and there's only three or four family setups left." 2 TIME FOR a fact check here: The Haases actually rank seventh, behind Ted Turner in Atlanta, George Steinbrenner in New York, the O'Malleys in Los Angeles, the Busches in St. Louis, the Autrys in Anaheim and the Seligs in Milwaukee. And fifth among families.

The point is made, though, even if the numbers are slightly askew. Fifteen years is plenty.

"There's a lifespan to these things, and we've reached it," Wally Haas said. "The (financial) losses, the whole thing."

The Haases didn't buy into baseball to make a killing. They would have happily made that killing had it presented itself, and as it is they are selling the franchise for $72.3 million more than they bought it for. Wally Haas claims that the A's will not have made money for the family in its 15 years, but offers no other details, so whatever they made or lost is anyone's guess.

What is sure, though, is that Walter was not your run-of-the-mill owner. He liked the games, and despite the advice of others (other owners, according to aide-de-camp Bill Rigney, and Rigney himself, according to Wally), loved his players. 2 HE LOVED to tell the story about a meeting with Art Kusnyer, one of Tony La Russa's coaches, in which Kusnyer blurted, "Jeez, Walter, how's your son Moose?" In fact, Moose Haas was not only no relation, but was a pitcher who had beaten the club out of a tidy contract and then got hurt and was never helpful to the A's.

More remarkably, although he loved spending time in La Russa's office with the baseball staff just listening to them puzzle out solutions to problems, he never offered a single why-don't-you-try-this?

"I don't remember him ever imposing an opinion on anyone," Rigney said. "In fact, I don't think he ever said no to the baseball people when they wanted to do anything. He wanted to know what it was and how much it would cost, as he should, but he never told them no, or do this instead, or anything. He was perfect that way. He said, "If that's what you think we need, then do it.' "

"Until a few years ago, he would watch a game that we lost in the last inning or blew one we had in the bag, and for some reason he would inevitably apologize to me," Wally said. "He cared a lot. He was an incredible fan."

"I think the lowest he ever got was the night of the Gibson game," Rigney said of the classic 1988 World Series game when Kirk Gibson homered off Dennis Eckersley in the bottom of the ninth to turn the entire series to Los Angeles. "He was as close to being devastated as I ever saw him get. He said, "C'mon Rig, let's go back to the hotel and have a few drinks.' And that was it."

But nobody could remember a single act of I'm-the-owner-damn-it or its corollary, It's-my-money-damn-it. This makes him so unusual among sports owners in general and baseball owners in particular that the Haas Era might never be appreciated in the rest of the country the way it was here.

Rigney, who has been in baseball for half a century, could think of only one owner, the late John Fetzer in Detroit, who was remotely like Walter Jr., and Fetzer has been out of baseball for longer than the Haases have been in. Wally Haas, admittedly biased, thought that maybe the late Ewing Kauffman in Kansas City came close, "although I think my dad dressed better." 2 BUT THE MEN who shape baseball now are either highly meddlesome, publicity junkies, real-estate blackmailers, venal profit-takers or just plain folks who aren't baseball fans. Their first allegiance is to themselves, and it never showed more than last season.

And now baseball is like an old tortoise, lying on its shell and with no idea of how to right itself. Still no deal with the players. One team, Pittsburgh, absolutely with one foot out of town. Three others, Seattle, Milwaukee and San Francisco, utterly dependent upon the outcome of a stadium referendum. And eight other teams trying to create the groundswell of fear that usually results in a new park. Ennui grips the nation, and they are still too obsessed with grabbing Don Fehr by the thorax.

This is not what Walter Haas bought in for, so this is as good a time as any to get out. One hopes in his remaining time that he'll be able to enjoy not only owning the A's, but not owning them as well.&lt;